Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!olivea!uunet!shelby!neon!flamingo.Stanford.EDU!espie From: espie@flamingo.Stanford.EDU (Marc Espie) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer Subject: Re: How are some programs SO DAMN SMALL! Message-ID: <1991Feb14.214417.13133@Neon.Stanford.EDU> Date: 14 Feb 91 21:44:17 GMT References: <91045.150604GUTEST8@cc1.kuleuven.ac.be> Sender: news@Neon.Stanford.EDU (USENET News System) Organization: LIENS, ENS, 45 rue d'Ulm, Paris (France) Lines: 36 echo "hello world" is a program in AmigaShell which is roughly 20 bytes long. Even though it's slow, it is often much easier to write a shell-script than a C program. Depends on the application. With 2.0 enhancements, the shell becomes much more easier to use, and one of the best ways to do some simple things (like sorting list output, finding files, applying the same command to some files recursively, extending the move commands, and so on). On the other hand, /**/ say hello world is the ``hello world'' program in Arexx. It's roughly 20 bytes long, and raisonnably fast. Of course, the Arexx interpreter takes around 40 to 60K to work, but it is standard in 2.0, and there's a good chance you will have the interpreter loaded and running anyway. Then, you have all the ease of use of a well-conceived programming language. For many cases, this is an alternative to getting out your C compiler, especially if the size of the program/effective time to acheive a one-shot task are the factors. BASIC ? Yes, it is possible to write short programs in Basic too. Boy, that would be slow, and the interpreter is *huge*. Also, I never liked basic, and microsoft's was so brain-dead it didn't even make it to 2.0, so anyway... Why reinvent the wheel ? There is a powerful shell at your disposal, there's Arexx, you don't HAVE to use C for everything !! And I didn't even speak of Scheme, Maple or other languages. The Amiga has a plethora of them. So... use your Amiga, guys ! -- Marc Espie (espie@flamingo.stanford.edu)